My Poetry

Natikwa Goodwin
Silver Stream



In poetry, you render from the gut –
Expository slut, the aim:
Cathartic legs apart,
Inviting all to penetrate
Your world;
A whore of individuality –
Your literary art ejaculating
From the riven heart –
Pumping, thumping, crying out
Upon the sleeve –
For that is what you do –
Uniquely –
Now believe.

By: Mark R Slaughter

My poetry comes from my ideas about life. My poetry talks about different aspects of life, how I feel about it and the people in it and what they mean to me. I used different things to describe a bigger meaning. In my poem called, “Magic” I talk about beauty, fun, and magic. In this poem, the overall subliminal topic is the beauty, fun, and magic in life. In the line, “Every thing you need such a big tease/ flavors to many every good taste,” is an example. The line in the sonet is saying everything in the world is such a big tease there is everything in the world that you want, “flavors to many,” but you cannot have everything. In my poem called, “With Them” I am talking about my friends, another aspect of life that I am very fond of. In the poem, I discuss what they mean to me, and what they do for me. For example, “Who can fill the empty void & lack of love,” in this line I am saying, who can love me like my own friends. The love I don’t receive from others, is something that doesn’t affect me because I know I can always get it from my friends, “because they love me.”





MAGIC

SONET


i want to go to magical place
fairies toy trees play house dollies cream cheese
much fun to come in a sparkly space
every thing you need such a big tease
flavors to many every good taste
come on you know you want to can you please?
see, told you you love it look at your face
fairies toy trees play house dollies cream cheese
look left look right such a sight is this place
to be with fairies is to me the dream
many toys and colors galore and great
giant cars big races two to a team

Ool la la my areas are true much to true
fun was done and my mind had fun i'm up

WITH THEM

ODE

they mean so much to me .
the engine to my train .
where can i go without no wheels?
they give me the satisfaction i need.
who can fill the empty void & lack of love.
i bet they can .
free of lies and true to me .
that because they love me .
all for one and one for all ,
my friends are always within me .


MY LOVE

memory poem




in him i put my trust, love and especially lust.
we loved and believed that everything would work
we laughed, we joked, we even cried together.
until they day came ..
my heart ached through every lie
i went disturbingly deaf from the secret sly sighs
believing in him was all i could do
in the end, it hurt my heart
to watch him leave,
but the spirit of goodness blessed my mind
to know that i was free.

My Poet : David Lehman


When a Woman Loves a Man


When she says margarita she means daiquiri.
When she says
quixotic she means mercurial.
And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again,"
she means, "Put your arms around me from behind
as I stand disconsolate at the window."

He's supposed to know that.

When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia
or he is in Boston, writing, and she is in New York, reading,
or she is wearing a sweater and sunglasses in Balboa Park and he
is raking leaves in Ithaca
or he is driving to East Hampton and she is standing disconsolate
at the window overlooking the bay
where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on
while he is stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway.

When a woman loves a man it is one ten in the morning
she is asleep he is watching the ball scores and eating pretzels
drinking lemonade
and two hours later he wakes up and staggers into bed
where she remains asleep and very warm.

When she says tomorrow she means in three or four weeks.
When she says, "We're talking about me now,"
he stops talking. Her best friend comes over and says,
"Did somebody die?"

When a woman loves a man, they have gone
to swim naked in the stream
on a glorious July day
with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle
of water rushing over smooth rocks,
and there is nothing alien in the universe.

Ripe apples fall about them.
What else can they do but eat?

When he says, "Ours is a transitional era,"
"that's very original of you," she replies,
dry as the martini he is sipping.

They fight all the time
It's fun
What do I owe you?
Let's start with an apology
Ok, I'm sorry, you dickhead.
A sign is held up saying "Laughter."
It's a silent picture.
"I've been fucked without a kiss," she says,
"and you can quote me on that,"
which sounds great in an English accent.

One year they broke up seven times and threatened to do it
another nine times.

When a woman loves a man, she wants him to meet her at the
airport in a foreign country with a jeep.
When a man loves a woman he's there. He doesn't complain that
she's two hours late
and there's nothing in the refrigerator.

When a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake.
She's like a child crying
at nightfall because she didn't want the day to end.

When a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking:
as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved.
A thousand fireflies wink at him.
The frogs sound like the string section
of the orchestra warming up.
The stars dangle down like earrings the shape of grapes.



In this poem he’s saying the real meanings of the things a girl says, to a lover or someone she is interested in. He gives examples of common phrases or statements that woman say that may seem she’s upset, or done with a situation. He gives the alternative meanings for those phrases and what he believes she truly means. For example, “And when she says, ‘I'll never speak to you again,’/she means, ‘Put your arms around me from behind/as I stand disconsolate at the window.’ This poem is overall about the love a man and a woman has for each other. Numerous lines in the poem discuss love, towards the end he starts to tell a small story regarding the love between two people.


Sexism


The happiest moment in a woman's life
Is when she hears the turn of her lover's key
In the lock, and pretends to be asleep
When he enters the room, trying to be
Quiet but clumsy, bumping into things,
And she can smell the liquor on his breath
But forgives him because she has him back
And doesn't have to sleep alone.

The happiest moment in a man's life
Is when he climbs out of bed
With a woman, after an hour's sleep,
After making love, and pulls on
His trousers, and walks outside,
And pees in the bushes, and sees
The high August sky full of stars
And gets in his car and drives home.


This poems displays the happiest moments in a man and a womans life. The author, David Lehman descriptively tells the environment in which each happy moments happens. He tells the step-by-step movements that occur. In the poem he says, “Is when he climbs out of bed/ With a woman, after an hour's sleep,/ After making love, and pulls on/ His trousers, and walks outside/ And pees in the bushes” Here is where he describes the actions that occur after having sex with a woman. Although, these actions are so simple but they play a big role in the process of the “happiest moment in a mans life” by him telling that, he’s saying even the smallest actions can make a difference. Those actions are all apart of the moment, which makes them the happiest.


A Quick One Before I Go


here comes a time in every man's life
when he thinks: I have never had a single
original thought in my life
including this one & therefore I shall
eliminate all ideas from my poems
which shall consist of cats, rice, rain
baseball cards, fire escapes, hanging plants
red brick houses where I shall give up booze
and organized religion even if it means
despair is a logical possibility that can't
be disproved I shall concentrate on the five
senses and what they half perceive and half
create, the green street signs with white
letters on them the body next to mine
asleep while I think these thoughts
that I want to eliminate like nostalgia
0 was there ever a man who felt as I do
like a pronoun out of step with all the other
floating signifiers no things but in words
an orange T-shirt a lime green awning



This poem starts off talking about how nothing you think is original. Whatever the thought maybe, there has to be someone who has thought it before you, including the thought he stated itself. Since no thought is original, the author wants to think of a thought that he can claim original so he will, “eliminate all ideas from my poems which shall consist of cats, rice, rain/ baseball cards, fire escapes, hanging plants/ red brick houses,” from his ideas. By him saying he will eliminate those words he’s saying that those are thoughts that are commonly used and are definitely not original. In the poem he also says, “I shall give up booze/ and organized religion” drinking booze or liquor is also an idea or action that is common, also religion they are both ideas he didn’t think of. He makes a little joke by saying, “even if it means/ despair is a logical possibility,” in other words he’s saying, he’ll give up drinking and his religion even if it will leave him hopeless just to find an original thought.